Letter to the editor

About a week prior to the start of the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games, Australia’s ‘Golden Girl’, Betty Cuthbert and many other Australian and international track and field athletes, performed on the Puckapunyal Army Camp oval.

A huge crowd enjoyed that wonderful practice event. Betty Cuthbert won three gold medals at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and one gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

Betty Cuthbert, a good woman and one of Australia’s greatest athletes, died on August 7, 2017 aged 79 years.

In the early 1980s, Australia’s Geoff T. Mayer was the world’s top scientist in the field of advanced materials.

At the CSIRO Fisherman’s Bend advanced materials laboratory, Geoff developed (or harnessed) the durable material, magnesia partially stabilised zirconia (MgPSZ) ahead of Japanese scientists who, in attempting to achieve the same goal, had, in their project, applied the unsuccessful formula of magnesia fully stabilised zirconia.

At Sungarrin CSIRO field station, Seymour on October 25, 1984, Gary McLarty and myself, shearing Glendoxy bred Merino ewes, became the world’s first shearers to trial MgPSZ narrow cutters, made by brilliant G.T. Mayer.

That is absolute and there no exists no alternative history.

— John J. Maher,

Seymour

Lifesaving service

The Australian Red Cross Blood Service would like to thank donors from Seymour for their generosity when the mobile donor centre visited recently.

You gave 110 donations, saving an incredible 330 lives — thank you!

One in three Australians will need blood or a blood product in their lifetime, but only one in 30 currently donates.

The mobile donor centre will next visit Seymour from Monday, February 12 to Friday, February 16.

Phone 131495 to make an appointment or visit www.donateblood.com.au for more information.